


You ain't seen nothing like me yet

by sirona



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: #coulsonlives, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explanations, Frigga is BADASS, Get Together, How Phil Coulson Got His Groove Back, Kissing, M/M, Phil Needs a Hug, Romance, Self-Sacrifice, Strike Team Delta to the rescue!, Stupid Boys, Tahiti is a Magical Place, What Would Cap Do?, it's all quantum okay, magic!, pathologically snarky babies, spoilers for Agents of SHIELD up to episode 12, this fic is so hard to tag, utterly disregards That Plot Point in Thor 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 06:11:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1156077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirona/pseuds/sirona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of "The Magical Place", Phil needs answers. He goes to Clint in the hope that Clint can help. As per usual when it comes to Clint Barton, Phil does not expect what he finds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You ain't seen nothing like me yet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morganoconner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganoconner/gifts).



> Written for MorganOConner, who generously donated and won me in the FandomAid 2013 auction. I loved zie's prompt, I'd been meaning to write something like this for ages, and I'm very pleased that I have managed to finish this before it gets ANY more Jossed (and it will, oh, will it ever. /0\\)
> 
> As such, it contains spoilers for Agents of SHIELD up to and including episode 12, so you know it will deal with Tahiti. Proceed with caution. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of quantum beyond reading Terry Pratchett and Michio Kaku. This particular plot reveal owes quite a lot to Doctor Who and the Weeping Angels -- that's what sparked the idea for me in the first place. I'm pretty sure this is how it WOULD work, though, were this at all possible. >.>
> 
> A million thanks to Pollyrepeat for looking this over and listening to me flail about this story and generally being amazing. <3
> 
> Title from Adele's "Make You Feel My Love".

Phil shouldn’t be here.

It’s not like he’s breaking any rules; Barton has known all along that he’s back, he and Natasha are level 7, after all -- it’s more that…

Well. Barton and Romanov do not deserve to be dragged into the train wreck that is his life of late. Since Raina. Since the machine. Since he learned that everything he thought he knew was a lie.

Everything, except this. Strike Team Delta had functioned like a well-oiled, if pathologically snarky, machine for _years_ \-- it’s in every report ever filed, every complaint from put-upon SHIELD personnel, every piece of paper ever generated by the project. He _knows_ this isn’t a lie, that the way he feels about Barton and Romanov now – the family he never had – is something ingrained into his bones, not something a machine can tell him to feel.

Yet, here he is. Because—because he knows he’s losing his edge. He knows that he is barely coping, he doesn’t need his new team’s concerned faces to tell him that. The only reason he hasn’t had a psychotic break is the same reason he has got through many hellish things since he started first grade, the one question that drives him still: What would Cap do? It’s a mantra that has kept him sane through things no human should experience, and it’s even more poignant now that Cap is back, now that Phil has seen first-hand what Cap has been through, the man he is despite—because of it, how admirably he is coping with it all. Phil can do nothing less.

That doesn’t mean he can shrug it off just like that. Especially with Dr. Streiten’s last words -- of what he had become (words that Phil had run from as if they could change anything, stupid, stupid, he should have stayed and collected all the intel he could), something through which Nick and Maria saw no way forward but to mess with his mind. Nick Fury is many things, but what he is not is needlessly prone to hysterics, or careless with this kind of thing. This has 'last resort' written all over it -- Phil knows something about that, has seen (and made) enough of those kinds of deals in his time with SHIELD.

Maybe Barton would be able to shed some light onto this. He has always seen things that Phil hasn’t even known to look for. Phil bets that if he had been thinking clearer, he’d have gone to Barton with the Skye problem and it would have been solved in under a day without unnecessary out-of-the-way trips. Not that he didn’t enjoy giving Lola an outing, or having Melinda to himself – yes, even with all that entailed. And anyway, she’s right. He has to move forward. Look how remarkably well Skye coped with the news he sprung on her. No more secrets. He meant it then, he means it now. Maybe Barton knows something that will set his mind at peace. Phil can only hope.

Still, he hesitates before he knocks on the door to Barton’s apartment. The lights had been on when Phil checked from the street, but he has no way of knowing whether it’s Barton in there. He might be at the Avengers Tower. He might be at Natasha’s place. He might be out with Sitwell, or stalking a target for a sudden, unplanned mission. He might be at the range.

He might be inside, but not alone.

He could be any of that, but Phil won’t know until he balls up and knocks, and he should stop stalling already.

Phil straightens his jacket and his tie (unnecessarily, it’s not like Barton hasn’t seen him in much worse states), and then raps his knuckles on the wood.

The door opens before he has even had time to put his arm down. Barton stands framed in the doorway, leaning on the doorjamb and watching Phil with wary eyes. God, he looks… Phil takes just a second, just one second to drink him in, let his eyes wonder. He has _missed_ this sight.

“Hey,” Barton says, giving Phil a crooked smile that sends something in his chest flipping over. All of a sudden, Phil can’t breathe. His lungs sting, and his throat feels stuffed with razor blades. He tries to return Barton’s smile, but he knows he must have done a piss-poor job of that when Barton’s face tightens and he steps back, wordlessly asking Phil inside.

At least his body still works. Phil walks past him -- standing a careful distance away so Phil doesn’t have to touch it if he doesn’t want to. (Phil wants to. So much. But he can’t.)

“Can I get you anything? Here, sit down.”

He guides Phil into a seat on his threadbare yet incredibly comfortable sofa. Lucky, the dog Barton had somehow acquired a few months ago, in circumstances he refuses to discuss, jumps up next to Phil and lays his head in Phil’s lap, like he knows how much Phil needs the friendly contact. Phil buries his hand in his fur and clings, just a little. Barton probably won’t notice.

The man himself disappears from his side, returning a little while later with a mug of tea, which he places on the coffee table before Phil. The Earl Grey teabag is still inside. It’s a tiny thing, and it should not make Phil this fucking close to breaking down, but apparently this much hasn’t changed, either. Then, Barton sits in the armchair across from Phil, and waits.

He has to wait for a long time, because to Phil’s horror, he can’t make himself speak without his voice breaking. He tries a couple of times, but it just isn’t happening, and each time he snaps his mouth shut with a frustrated, shaky sigh, the skin around Barton’s eyes tightens a little more. This is ridiculous; Phil may have not been himself these past few weeks (he doesn’t _know_ if he has been, is the worst part), but he had been holding up, even if inexplicable loneliness swamped him at the least expected times. There has certainly been nothing like this desolation he feels now, like it’s been waiting for him just around the corner, until his defences slipped the slightest bit and it could slink inside, devastate his insides, ravage his mind.

Shit. He can’t do this.

“Hey,” Barton says quietly. He stands, nudges Lucky out of the way and takes his place next to Phil. Phil’s hand, deprived of its hold in Lucky’s soft fur, is taken in Barton’s instead – and it’s better, because this time Barton’s hand is holding back, just as tightly as Phil is gripping it. “It’s okay. Breathe, Phil. Breathe. It’s okay.”

Had he been feeling like himself, he would have happily pointed out that repeating the same thing over and over again did not make it any more true. Of course, the whole point is that he isn’t feeling himself, isn’t it? Barton’s touch seems to be hard-wired into Phil’s nervous system, because it hasn’t been a full minute yet before he starts calming. At first, it’s his breathing following Barton’s instructions and slowing down obligingly. His heartbeat is next, and soon afterwards, his throat loosens enough that he can draw a deeper breath. Phil stares down at Lucky, sprawled over his feet, and feels clumsy and stupid and unspeakably grateful. He squeezes Barton’s hand, signaling that it’s okay to let him go if Barton wants to.

Barton doesn’t move, and Phil can’t make himself let go first. He feels anchored for the first time in months, ever since everything started to unravel, and he feels so devastatingly vulnerable, but he also knows that this is one of the very, very few places where he is safe.

“I don’t know what is happening to me,” he admits, voice low and rough. “I don’t know how much you know, about my ‘resurrection’,” (and if he sounds bitter, well, he’s entitled to it, damn it.) “I’ve recently come across some information that has proven…hard to swallow.”

Barton winces. Oh. Right, then. He knows more than Phil expected him to.

“Yeah, I—I heard about your run-in with Centipede. And Doc Streiten."

Phil goes still.

“Barton,” he says carefully. “How much do you know, _exactly_ , about what happened to me?”

Barton swallows tightly, throat bobbing. “Uh.”

Phil tightens his hand warningly around the strong fingers in his grip.

“Barton,” he growls. Barton should know better than to disobey that voice.

Barton makes a face. It’s a face that Phil knows well, the kind Barton makes when he thinks – he knows – that Phil won’t like the answer. Despite everything, Phil has to fight not to let his lips twitch in amusement. That much hasn’t changed, apparently.

“All of it,” Barton says quietly, like he thinks Phil might not catch that.

Paradoxically, it calms Phil right down. Because if Barton knows _everything_ , and yet he’s still sitting here, holding Phil’s hand, then it can’t be all that bad. Barton’s moral compass may be less than perfectly level, but it functions without fault, in its own way; and Phil trusts it, trusts it where sometimes he might not trust his own.

Barton smiles when he feels Phil relax, practically projecting relief. Phil sends him a pointed look.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook just because I’m going to leave off deboning you for now,” he warns, and Barton laughs, short and bright. He doesn’t call Phil’s bluff, which Phil grudgingly appreciates.

“Tell me?” Phil asks softly, a few moments later. He can’t look at Barton’s face. This means too much, even if it doesn’t feel quite as life-or-death anymore.

Barton sighs. He looks away from Phil’s face, thousand-yard stare fixed on something Phil has even less chance of seeing than usual.

“It was after day nine. After the machine was done rewiring. Your mind should have been back to normal, they said, but something wasn’t right. You didn’t seem to want to do anything but lie there and stare at the ceiling and wait for time to pass.”

Barton’s face is flat when he pauses, flat and blank and expressionless like a mask, and Phil finds himself strangely comforted. This is in the past. This was done, and all there is left now is to debrief, to get the story on paper for the people to come long after they're both gone.

If he treats this like a mission that has gone horribly wrong, but is being fixed the best any of them could, maybe he can get through this. Maybe, he doesn’t have to be afraid. Maybe, nothing has been broken beyond repair. Maybe, he can cut himself some slack – Barton sure seems to be able to compartmentalize admirably, and _he_ isn’t acting like Phil is unnatural, an abomination in his own right.

“They had no idea what was happening to you,” Barton goes on. “No one seemed to be able to elicit a reaction from you. You looked at Director Fury like it was the first time you’d ever seen him; you looked straight through Sitwell and Hill. At the time, it was thought that more familiar faces might be able to get through to you – which is when they brought us in. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to make a difference. I’m not sure you even recognized us.”

Now, for the first time since he started speaking, something falters in Barton’s voice. It’s the slightest waver, but Phil hears it loud and clear. He wants to rush in and explain, offer anything that would stop Barton from looking so helpless, but he has nothing. He can only squeeze Barton’s hand, hope it tells Barton enough.

Barton sends him a small, sheepish smile, like he is at fault for reacting like that. It’s terrible and wrong and Phil hates it.

“Anyway, apparently that was the last stop in their plan, so the Director went and called in a favor from Thor’s mom. She agreed to come down and take a look at you as recompense for her son’s actions. She’s amazing, Phil, it sucks that you don’t remember her, all regal and contained and with this peace around her; when she stood next to you, it was like you could breathe at last.

“To cut a long story short, apparently the issue was that you had no karma anymore. No fate. Whatever thread your life followed before Loki—before, it was gone now. You were unmoored, left drifting. That was why you didn’t seem to have a will to live. I—“

Barton stops. His hold on Phil’s hand passed ‘tight’ some time ago, and is now verging on actively painful, but Phil will be _damned_ if he’s ever letting go. He can’t say a thing. ‘It’s okay’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, though for a reason that Phil cannot fathom, it’s actually true this time. What had seemed insurmountable only a short while ago now feels...just like another chapter in his life.

If what Barton is saying is true, however – and he has no reason to lie, so it must be – that’s going to need some explaining, because according to _him_ , Phil has no narrative anymore. Nowhere a ‘chapter’ can follow.

“Phil,” Barton whispers. Phil holds on to his hand for dear life, because he can’t seem to be able to speak. “If I never live to see you like that again, it'll still be too soon.”

Phil’s hand seems to have developed a life of its own, because sure as anything, Phil is looking down at his own fingers stroking paths over Clint’s skin, following veins and tendons and nerves and bones, mapping territory he’s sure he has no right to consider his own.

“What happened then?” he asks around the lump in his throat. Here’s the strange part: the lump isn’t for him. He feels strangely detached from the conversation, like it’s happening to someone else, like it’s _about_ someone else.

Barton takes a deep breath, shooting Phil a look he can’t decipher. “She stared off into the distance for a while, god—ugh, this is complicated. Only _she_ knows what she saw, how’s that? –But she came back into her head after ten minutes or so, and said that your thread had been severed. You had no purpose anymore, so you didn’t know how to go on. And then she asked how badly we wanted you back.”

Phil shakes his head. “What could anyone have done? Wanting isn’t enough. It’s never enough.” If it were, there wouldn’t be years and years between them when holding Barton’s hand had been _all_ that Phil had wanted in the world, and everything he never got. He knows better than most. If wishes were pebbles, he’d have a damn volcano to find a spot for.

Barton shrugs, flashing Phil a half-grin. “You haven’t factored in all the variables, Agent Coulson. This is the Norse goddess of birth and family. _Re_ birth isn’t all that different. She just needed a spare dose of quantum to mold.”

Phil blinks, then snorts inelegantly. “Oh, is that all,” he deadpans.

Barton grins, shrugging. “Hey, don’t ask me, I’m just the grunt. She said she needed quantum -- I asked, how do I get it.”

Phil stares at him. “Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Barton repeats, staring Phil down, _daring_ him to question him. Phil isn’t that big a fool. He knows what Clint Barton is capable of for the people he cares about, he just… hadn’t dared to imagine he fell within that category.

“So what did you have to do? How the hell do you procure quantum?”

Barton looks away, cheeks flushing. Oh, god. Phil does not like the look of that. (He is a liar. He likes the _look_ of it plenty; it would take stronger men than he to be able to ignore how fetchingly sweet it makes Barton look. It’s just… he has a finely-tuned sense of premonition, and right now it’s jumping up and down and pinwheeling its arms.)

“Barton,” he says, torn between warning and exasperation and mounting dread. “What did you do?”

Barton waves his other hand. “Nothing all that much. Apparently, to release quantum you have to let go of things. Choices. Options that can make your life’s path diverge. Natasha gave up her pain. She said she didn’t need it to drive her anymore. Said she has something better than pain now – she has family. It was hilarious, Sitwell had to pretend he had something in his eye, you know how he is about her.”

Phil smiles softly, huffing a sigh around the lump in his throat. Natasha Romanov – never failing to surprise him. He has always known she liked him, she isn’t stingy with her affections when she has decided to bestow them on someone, but this… Phil can barely process it. Natasha guards her pain jealously, uses it to propel her like one of Tony’s repulsors, trusts it to guide her steps in the way she doesn’t trust her head. To give it up—Phil can’t comprehend it.

“I’ll have to thank her,” he says weakly. It doesn’t _begin_ to cover what he owes her.

“Hmm.”

Phil eyes him, instantly suspicious. “What aren’t you telling me?” he asks – doesn’t demand, because that never works on Barton, but asks, asking Barton to trust him in return.

Barton’s eyes dart up to his, wide and startled. “You've always read me too well,” he grumbles, pursing his lips. “Okay. It helped, what Natasha did, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough, barely sufficient to place the hook. To reel it in, you—Frigga needed something much bigger. So, I—well, it’s not like I was going to use it. I don’t _want_ to use it. I’m fine as I am. Honestly, it’s almost a relief, knowing I won’t have to go through any of that again. That I’m done falling in love.”

Phil stares at him. “You’re going to have to elaborate for me,” he says, painfully aware of how choked his voice sounds.

Barton winces, closing his eyes for a second. “Look, I, first of all, I need you to know that I am absolutely in no way expecting anything from you. Ever. Okay? This is just—I did this because I could not see my life without you in it. So really, it’s for entirely selfish reasons.”

Phil isn’t sure he’s even breathing right now. “Clint, what did you do?” he whispers, trying not to let Clint’s words sink in too deep, give him hope for things he didn’t think he’ll ever have – except – except—

Clint shrugs self-consciously. “I gave up love. The potential for future love, that is. Like, I’ll never fall in love again with anyone other than the—uh, the person I’m in love with now.”

Phil’s chest seizes. That’s it, then. He has missed his chance well and good, and he only has himself to blame for it. But—oh god, _Clint_. His fingers spasm on Clint’s hand still in his. “Clint, oh my god, why would you do this? I mean, I understand that you and your girlfriend? Boyfriend? Love each other, and that’s great, I’m so happy for you, but—that is a huge sacrifice. Surely you didn’t have to—“

“Shut up,” Clint says calmly. “Just shut up, yeah, I had to. I had to because I can’t do this without you. You idiot, there is no girlfriend. Boyfriend. Self-sacrificing asshole, what even was that? You think I don’t know the way you look at me? I always thought we’d have time, but we didn’t, there was no more time, and I couldn’t—I can’t. I _won’t_ let you go, if I could anchor you to this place, this time. I wouldn’t have condoned what the Director did to you if I'd had a say in it, but you were already back, Phil. You were alive and lost and I couldn’t. So now you have quantum and potential again, and that’s what made you really wake up. Apparently without the chance to do things and make mistakes and learn and be truly free to fuck up if that’s what you had to do, you don’t feel fully alive. Who knew, right?”

“Clint,” Phil says, again. It’s all he seems to be able to say. All there _is_ for him to say. Clint’s name is the only thing left in the world. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

Clint sways towards him, pulling himself to a wrenching stop when he’s mere inches from Phil’s mouth. His jaw clenches, and his nostrils flare once, before he leans away. “Yeah. I love you. It’s fine, it’s—okay. I like it. I like knowing I can feel that way about someone. I _still_ don’t expect anything from you, I need you to know this. We can just go on as if nothing ever happened. You’re free to fall in love with anyone you want. That’s what quantum is, apparently.”

Phil pauses, waits until Clint looks back up, until he can feel Clint’s attention on him, the same addictive hum under his skin that it has always been. “Anyone at all? Free of fate or karma or repercussions?”

Clint’s jaw ticks. “Yes,” he says. “Anyone at all.”

Phil takes his first deep breath in what feels like years, ever since he’d learned the true depth of how very fucked he is.

“Clint,” he says, shaking off Clint’s hand, allowing no more than a split second of sick disappointment to crawl over Clint’s face before he is framing it with both his hands, tracing Clint’s cheekbones with his thumbs, tucking his fingers in Clint’s soft hair. “And you call me a self-sacrificing idiot. Do you honestly believe I will ever let you go of my own free will?”

Clint’s mouth is pouting open, eyes sharp where they stare into Phil’s own. “Really?” he whispers.

Phil tries, he really tries to find any words at all to answer Clint’s question, but his mind seems to have decided that it’s done talking. Phil can’t exactly disagree. So he leans forward and presses his lips to Clint’s soft mouth, kisses him gently, chastely, just a shift of skin on dry skin, never mind how it makes his own lips tingle, hypersensitive to Clint’s touch.

Clint sucks in a huge breath, and then Phil suddenly finds himself on his back with a lap-full of clingy archer. Clint’s thighs are open and spread astride Phil, legs tucked in against Phil’s sides, like Clint wants to get as close to him as he can get; like he wants to crawl right inside Phil’s chest. Phil is _more_ than okay with that, holds Clint back like he wouldn’t be able to breathe without him (he probably wouldn’t, in truth), arms so tight around Clint’s body that Phil worries dimly that he’s crushing him -- but Clint doesn’t seem to mind. 

No, Clint kisses him like he couldn’t breathe without him, either, mouth warm and wet and open to Phil’s exploration, throat letting out the most delicious, tight, squirming noises as Clint slants his head, opens himself up even more for Phil to plunder (and yes, he did just think that thought, there is no help for him). But Phil wants it, wants to be inside Clint, wants Clint to be inside him, forever, always. He honestly does not know how he has survived all these years when he didn’t have this. The past stretches behind him, empty and barren, but the future – oh, the future looks bright indeed.

Clint keeps kissing him and kissing him, pulling back for mere seconds here and there but diving right back in, like he can’t stop himself.

“God, Phil,” he gasps. His eyes are dark, his mouth is flushed and bee-stung, and Phil is very certain that he has never seen anything more beautiful in his life. “I can’t believe this is happening. Pinch me, I need to be sure I’m awake.”

Phil bites him instead, soothing the sting with his tongue even though Clint grunts deep in his throat and presses closer.

“I could never dream this,” Phil says, flushing at the reverence he hears in his own voice. It’s -- everything is so much more than he ever imagined.

“Christ,” Clint says, swooping in to take his mouth again. “I always knew you’d be like this.”

Phil smiles. “Old and broken and hopelessly in love with you?”

“Jesus Christ,” Clint says. His hands shift inwards to frame Phil’s face, thumb swiping at the corner of his mouth. Phil chases it, presses a kiss to the fleshy, calloused pad. “Hot and sexy and hard and amazing, more like.”

Phil’s gut clenches. Is that how Clint really sees him?

“You give me too much credit.”

“You don’t give yourself enough.”

“You’re biased.” It’s a warm, effervescent sensation somewhere in his chest.

“You’re damn right I am,” Clint says happily. He presses a kiss under Phil’s jaw, breath fanning over his throat. Phil shivers, tilting his head back at the same time as he pulls Clint closer.

“I can’t believe you feel that way about me,” Phil confesses. It’s every insecurity he usually works so hard to keep hidden behind his cool, collected front, but he made himself a promise. No more secrets.

Clint pulls back to look him in the eye; what Phil sees there damn near takes his breath away, like in all those romances he will not admit on pain of death he enjoys.

“Do you love me?” Clint asks, a simple question – if it weren’t for the tiny little flinch in his eyes.

Phil’s immediate reaction is to reach up, slide a hand in Clint’s hair, stroke the skin over his cheekbone.

“Yes,” he says simply. Superlatives have never been his forte, and he couldn’t even pull them up right now -- he feels too much. He feels like Frankenstein’s creature talking about love, all the life bubbling up inside of him when he thinks about Clint.

Clint smiles. “Then trust that I feel the same way about you.”

Trust Clint. This, Phil can do.

Clint seems to read the answer in his face, because his eyes soften again and he leans back in, proceeds to very effectively take Phil apart with his mouth, his hands, his body.

Phil doesn’t know where life will take him from there. The future is a blank slate, much as it has always been – but there’s more to it now. It holds a certainty that never existed before: that Clint would be a part of that future, no matter what either of them had to do for him to stay there. It’s more than Phil ever had.

Perhaps, he thinks to himself, it’s time he stopped sacrificing, stopped letting chances for a life if not normal, then at least full, rounded, complete, pass him by. Perhaps this is the chance he has been waiting for, over years and years of wanting and wishing and trusting so patiently that it will appear for him one day, to seize a little of that for himself, to start living the life he always hoped for -- with the one person he could ever imagine at his side.


End file.
